Calamity Jane

Posted on Jan 9, 2010

When I was little I was quite accident prone; my father’s nicknames for me were Calamity Jane and Murphy’s Law — I’ll give you one guess as to why. Now that I’m grown, it’s not that I’m suddenly full of grace, either. It’s more likely that I hide my accidents a bit better and look before I leap more often than I did when I was a child.

I remember writing an autobiographical essay for an English assignment in grade ten. The teacher had asked for a mini-biography (at age 16 it couldn’t be anything but short!) to teach us about writing in the first person, in the past tense. I thought it would be a funny twist to chronologically list my calamities rather than bore people with stories of how I got a dog when I was a kid or how my cat ate my brother’s bird. People respond to misfortune; it makes them laugh in the face of disaster — this was the wisdom of a 16 year-old.

Disaster #1: My brother dropped a drinking glass on the floor of the kitchen (which was marble) and it smashed into a thousand pieces. He cleaned it up, but once I walked in there I “found” the last remaining shard of glass with my foot. My parents thought it might work its way out (does glass ever really do that?) and didn’t take me to the hospital for a few days. When it was still stuck in there later on in the week my mom decided to trot me off to Sick Kids and had the doctor remove it. I got a lollipop and balloons — my brother was jealous and I still have a scar.

Disaster #2: I was in kindergarten and we were at the park playing one day. I loved the slide; I could go up the stairs and slide down that thing for hours on end. Swings made me dizzy for some reason and the jungle-gym was an accident waiting to happen (to me at least), so the slide was my best friend in the park. One day I slid down just as the teacher blew her whistle that signaled everyone to freeze so she could do a “head-count”. I froze. The guy behind me did not. He slid on down that slide, smacking me from behind, pushing me off. I landed badly and cracked my left ankle. I was on crutches for at least 6 weeks (after my mom rushed me to Sick Kids to have it looked at, x-rayed and bandaged). I got another lollipop and balloons. I also got some seriously special treatment at school – pretty much everyone was jealous.

Disaster #3: My father was replacing the glass pane in the door at our cottage. He started to remove it and was called away for a minute. I came up from the lake and wanted to get into the cottage, having no idea what my father had been working on. I tried the door. This door is sticky (yes, it’s still sticky) and you really have to give it a good YANK to open it. I did this and that top window pane came completely loose, fell from the door frame and almost sliced off my right thumb. My parents (being quick on their collective toes) wrapped my hand in a dish towel, treated me by dunking my hand in a large measuring cup full of slightly diluted hydrogen peroxide (ouch!) and Tylenol. No stitches. No antibiotics. No doctor. Why ruin a perfectly good family vacation by driving an hour or two to the closest hospital?! I do have to add here that my thumb is still attached to my hand and works just fine although it does sport a rather large scar and has some nerve damage. NO STITCHES. I swear, I was a miracle child. Eventually my mom took me to Sick Kids to have my thumb looked at – they said it was healing fine and wouldn’t bother with stitches anymore. I got another lollipop, some balloons and was sent home. No one was jealous.

Disaster #4: My older brother and I were at the supermarket with my mom and we were bored. He decided that pushing me around in the cart would be more fun than following my mom around the whole time. Then he decided – without clearing it with me first – that pushing me around wasn’t good enough. He decided that pushing me around really, really fast would be much more productive, and all of a sudden we were going Mach-5 around the Dominion. Admittedly, it was fun. Until the cart hit the fruit stand and everything went black. I opened my eyes and there were a half dozen grocery store employees standing around me as I lay, bruised and scared, UNDER the over-turned cart. Needless to say my mom didn’t take both of us shopping together again…ever.

While these are hardly the only “disasters” I encountered as a child, I always manage to recover each time I scrape my knee or fall up a flight of stairs (it happens more often than I’d care to admit). Comfort food comes in really handy on days when you slip in the shower or stub your toe on every corner you come across…and lately I seem to be the Queen of Comfort Food. This bread is the perfect thing to serve along with some really good corn chowder or even a hearty beef stew. It’ll keep you warm, keep you safe and keep you full.

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Jennifer Hamilton:

Having learned to write before she could walk (or so the story goes), Jennifer now scribes as a loving mother, creative home chef and determined DIY maven (among other things).

If you have any questions about anything on this site or want to enquiry about freelance, feel free to contact: jennifer [at] domesticgoddess [dot] ca.